My attempt to learn how to do "swing trading", which is holding stocks for about ten days at a time.

Friday, 30 September 2011

Week of 2011 SE 30

SPY fell by 0.3% this week, while my account rose 1.6% to its
highest value in six weeks. I am very pleased with this result, especially
since this was a week of travel for me so I couldn’t sit around all day
watching the market.

This week was the end of the third quarter of 2011 (and the last quarter of
many fiscal years), so professional traders were motivated to trade stock
amongst themselves at artificially-inflated prices to make their final books
look better. Yet the market fell anyway! I expect that SPY will
fall even more next week and perhaps quite a bit the week after that.

Euro news: The deputy prime minister of Greece said his people are
tapped out and cannot raise taxes any further. A Hungarian bankster working
at an Italian bank
said
that the Greek default is only days away and the Euro is “practically dead”.

US news: Mainstream media outlets are starting to cover the
protests on Wall St. The focus of protest is morphing from “bankster
greed” to “police brutality”. Some people are calling it the American
Spring (in comparison with Arab Spring), while others are
comparing it to the race riots in the 60’s when police aimed firehoses at
black children on live TV.

│

Daily % gain

size

owned

│

Max % loss

│

Results

Symbol

since

│

Fri

Mon

Tue

Wed

Thu

Fri

│

Beg

End

│

RWM

JL01

│

4.5

22

50

3.5

21

50

2.3

21

50

4.2

22

50

3.4

21

50

5.0

22

50

│

│

old puts

│

-2.6

0

0

-2.6

0

0

-2.6

0

0

-2.6

0

0

-2.6

0

0

-2.6

0

0

│

│

RPRX

JL25

│

-31.7

2

-30.7

2

-31.4

2

-34.1

2

-36.2

2

-40.2

2

│

+15.5

+15.5

│

NOp7½

JL25

│

21.0

1.5

19.5

1.4

19.7

1.4

21.5

1.5

24.5

1.6

27.9

1.6

│

−23.2

−23.2

│

TZA#1

SE12

│

9.1

26

3.0

25

-3.5

25

7.6

25

1.6

0

│

+0.9

+0.9

│

+7.8%

TNA#1

SE21

│

-13.8

5

-8.9

0

│

│

−0.5%

TNA#2

SE26

│

3.7

9

10.5

10

-1.7

9

2.6

9

-6.8

9

│

−15.1

+0.2

│

+7.0%

TZA#2

SE29

│

0.6

12

9.7

13

│

−15.1

−6.3

│

SPY

│

0.0

2.4

3.5

1.4

2.2

-0.3

│

│

me

│

0.0

-0.4

-0.3

0.2

-0.1

1.6

│

│

RWM: Doing okay. I am glad to say I am still holding some
of these shares since July 1st, but allocating 20% of my account to this
unleveraged holding means my maximum gain from the (imminent?) crash will be
only about 2.5× the market’s loss, rather than the 3.0× I could get if I
went all-in with TZA. Still, I think I’ll keep it until November
as it gives my account a bearish bias even on days when I’m not
holding TZA. The gains shown above are only half what
they could be because I bought more shares and then sold them, so only 50%
of total purchased shares are still live and affecting the gain.

RPRX: Not going anywhere. Once again the put-option has red
underlines every day, indicating that it is underpriced and I could get more from
exercising the option than from selling the shares & option separately.
This time the problem steps from end-of-quarter manipulation; last time it
was Options Expiration Week manipulations. What they have in common is that
the Big Boys are motivated to artifically inflate prices for one week.
Hopefully things will settle down next week. I guess I’ll wait until after
the crash before selling.

TZA: Sold on Monday and bought back on Thursday, which
helped to reduce anxiety during my road trip, but now I have only half as
many shares and my gain is 1% lower than it could have been. The trailing
stop would have triggered on Tuesday at +0.9% but I sold Monday for lots
more than that! If next Monday is a bad day for the market then I should
buy some more.

TNA: The oopsie from last week settled on Monday, which
happened to be the same day I bought it back (deliberately this time). Sold
on Wednesday because PPO went negative. Win! I made lots of money on
both TNA and TZA the same week, buying and selling them
alternately. That’s the way to do it! Money for nothing and your cheque’s
for free.